Mount Fuji visibility: when is the mountain out?

Source: Wikimedia Commons · Marion and Christoph Aistleitner, CC0

The mountain shows on about one morning in three, and it gives up a third of that by the afternoon. Fuji City has watched it from the same window three times a day since 1990: December is 61.7%, July 9.9%.

Whole mountain at 8am, over 35 years

36.6% of mornings

Best month

December, 61.7%

Worst month

July, 9.9%

1A window somebody has been counting since 1990

A member of staff at Fuji City Hall has looked south at the mountain three times a day since May 1990 — 8am, noon and 4pm — from the eighth floor, and filed each look as whole, part visible or nothing. The published record runs to the end of 2025: 35 years, and 12,784 observations in the morning column alone.

The whole mountain was out on 4,684 of those mornings. That's 36.6%, near enough one morning in three. Add the mornings when only the summit or the foot showed and the share climbs to 58.9%.

The city's own reading of its table: the mountain shows most from November to February and least from June to August, with the spring haze of March to May and the typhoon season in September holding the numbers down as well.

One figure per month flattens the month. The city also keeps a day-by-day calendar of the same record, which is what to use if you're weighing the first week of a month against the last.

The most recent year, for comparison

2025 came in just above the long-run average: the whole mountain on 136 mornings of 365, against a 35-year mean of 134. August is the month that shows what the summer does to the odds.

The spread behind the headline number: 22 clear mornings in February, three in August. The month you book moves the odds more than anything you can do on the day.

2Morning is the half of the day that works

Across the same 35 years the whole mountain stood clear at 8am on 36.6% of days, at noon on 23.3% and at 4pm on 22.5%. Count a partial view and the three readings are 58.9%, 53.4% and 49.7%. The mountain loses roughly a third of its morning odds by the afternoon.

2025 shows how narrow the best window is: the whole mountain showed at all three hours on 62 days, and never showed at all on 77.

The summit builds its own cloud as the ground below warms, which is the usual explanation for the slide through the day. Whatever the cause, a coach that reaches the lake at 10:30 has already spent most of the day's odds.

3A clear sky isn't the same as a view

Fuji City counts clear mornings too, and the two columns don't move together. Over the 35 years January had 745 clear mornings at 8am and the whole mountain on 651 of them — close enough. June had 425 clear mornings against 130 full views, July 380 against 107, August 550 against 158.

Last year made the point in one month: 16 clear days in August, three of them with the whole mountain. The city's own note on the figures reads 晴天であっても、必ずしも富士山が見えるわけではありません — a plain blue sky is no promise of a visible mountain.

So a sunny forecast over the lake is a reason to go, not an answer. What the summit is doing sits in the checks further down.

4From Tokyo the same bet runs four times longer

Source: Wikimedia Commons · Syced, CC0

Tokyo counts as well. The metropolitan government has photographed the mountain at 9am from its own building since 1992, the 35th floor to 2002 and the 31st from 2003, and the count before that came from the weather agency's Otemachi tower, at 10am, from 1971 to 1991. The average since 1992 is 95 days a year, about one in four.

December and January carry that average, at about 19 days each, against fewer than two in August. The last two full years came in at 111 days and 115.

The building the count comes from is open to anyone, and the observatories on the 45th floor cost nothing. It's the cheapest Fuji morning on this page: a lift, a window and a 95 km line of sight.

5The three checks worth making the night before

富士見予報, the Fujimi forecast

fuji-san.info scores the coming week from 1 to 10, morning and afternoon, for two directions of view: the north-east, which is the Fuji Five Lakes and the Tokyo side, and the south, which is Shizuoka. A high score means a better chance of seeing the mountain, not an empty sky — the page says so itself. It's rewritten around 4pm each day, which is the right hour to settle what tomorrow morning looks like. Japanese, English and Chinese versions all exist.

The live cameras

Yamanashi runs six: Fujiyoshida's own view, and one each over lakes Yamanaka, Kawaguchi, Shoji and Motosu, plus Fujigamine. Shizuoka runs eleven, from Shimizu Port and Fuji city round to the Satta pass, Nihon-daira and the prefecture's Mount Fuji World Heritage Centre. Both are free, and the reason to check one before you leave is that the camera settles in five seconds what the forecast argues about all morning.

Weather at the right altitude

A forecast for Kawaguchiko is a forecast for the town, and the summit sits about 2,950 m above it — 3,776 m above sea level against the lake's 830 m. Long-range charts describe the shape of a week, not a morning, so leave the decision to the index and the camera.

6When the white top arrives

初冠雪, the first snow cap, is called by the weather agency's Kofu office when the summit turns white as seen from about 40 km away. Three recent dates: 5 October 2023, 7 November 2024 (the latest since the record began in 1894) and 23 October 2025, which came 21 days behind the average date of 2 October.

As of 17 October 2026 the agency's summit page still read 積雪なし, no snow, a status it refreshes every hour at 25 minutes past. So the postcard version of the mountain, white cap over a dark base, rarely arrives before the second half of October, and from November you buy the cap and the better odds in the same trip. From July into early October the cap is gone altogether and the mountain is bare rock — the season the climbing routes open.

One change to know: from the 2027 cold season — the one that opened in August 2026, so the current one — the agency reads the cap from analysed snow depth rather than an observer's eyes, and warns that the two methods can't be compared like for like.

7North side, south side, and what each one gives you

Source: Wikimedia Commons · Alpsdake, CC BY-SA 4.0

Yamanashi, on the north, is the lake side: Kawaguchi, Yamanaka, Shoji, Motosu and Sai, served by the loop bus and the ropeway, with the easiest train and coach access sitting at Kawaguchi. A reflection in the water wants a windless early morning, which is also the hour with the best odds. Motosu holds the view that ran on the old ¥1,000 note.

Shizuoka, on the south, looks across Suruga Bay: the pines of Miho no Matsubara, a component of the World Heritage listing and the subject of one of Hokusai's prints; the terraces at Nihon-daira; the Satta pass above the old Tokaido road; and Tanukiko inland, under the mountain's western slope.

Source: Wikimedia Commons · Alpsdake, CC BY-SA 4.0

The south also gets a different card at each end of the year. Summer haze sits over the bay, and the clear air arrives with the late autumn, which is why a January morning works from the coast as well as from the lakes.

If you want the sun on the summit, the diamond, Tanukiko is the famous one: around 20 April and 20 August, give or take a week, at about 6am, with the sun doubled on the water.

Keep reading Tokyo to Kawaguchiko: four trains each morning, and the bus

8What I would book

November to February, two mornings rather than one, and a bed on the water. The first Fujikyu train out of Shinjuku reaches the pagoda's station before 9:30, and the highway coaches get to the car parks an hour later, so the lakeside night is what buys you the hour that matters.

If the first morning is a write-off, the index resets in the afternoon and the next day is a fresh bet. By seven the cameras have told you whether the walk to the deck is worth it, and by nine the mountain itself has usually answered.

9Questions and answers

The questions that come up most about choosing a morning for the mountain, from the month to the snow cap.

Keep reading

Tokyo to Kawaguchiko: four trains each morning, and the bus Mount Fuji in one day from Tokyo 2026-27: two stations on one line

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